


steer your way

by blindbatalex



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, ahhh i have so many feelings about both these men, also cw for some depiction of violence and blood, h/c bc this show has taken over my life apparently, set between the end of s2 and beginning of s3, someone come save me from myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 16:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13150608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindbatalex/pseuds/blindbatalex
Summary: Flint finds himself at the fort late one night after returning from a raid, though he has no sensible explanation why.





	steer your way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dornfelder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dornfelder/gifts).



> This doesn’t nearly reach the heights of your writing but here - have this token of my appreciation. Also, happy holidays!
> 
> Title from the Leonard Cohen song by the same name.

There is the smell of gunpowder and the flames. The prize ship ablaze in the setting dusk. There are the orders he barks and later questions he answers on the cargo, their course, the injuries. His own voice sounds distant as he speaks, muffled as if by a thick veil.

There is a house on the outskirts of Nassau that sits cold and empty, that beckons him and mocks him long before their long boat reaches the shore.

Beneath him the magistrate whimpers and begs like a dog. 

 

The wooden door creaks open. A figure emerges from it, his step light as always. The moonlight catches on his braids.

Flint blinks.

He looks around as if seeing his surroundings for the first time - the dirt path underneath his feet, the clutter of bushes to the side, the stones of the fort wall - and realizes with something akin to horror where his feet have led him.

Vane saunters back inside, the door he leaves open a wordless invitation.

“I should either be extremely flattered or extremely concerned if I’m the first person you visit upon coming ashore, Captain,” Vane says in that raspy whisper of his as he leads the way through the hallway.

Flint snorts to buy himself time to think of a sensible explanation - preferably one that doesn’t make him look every part the fool he is for showing up at the fort in the dead of the night with no rhyme or reason.

He is grateful when in the end Vane doesn’t press the issue and opts instead for pouring them both some rum and beckons for Flint to sit.

“The raid” he asks, “is it done?”

Flint nods, taking a swig of his drink, and tells Vane of how the magistrate lectured him on civilization only to piss himself when he felt Flint’s blade at his throat.

It had felt good to watch - to feel - that scum of a man struggle in his arms, his blood warm and sticky against Flint’s skin as life sputtered out of him inch by inch from his slit throat, as he gasped and begged for mercy.

“I won’t stop. I won’t stop until we brought England to heel - until she trembles with terror of us,” he concludes and means every word of it. He won’t stop until he sees all her cities burning, until every man who masquerades under the thin mask of civilization pays for what he has done.

He doesn’t think he can stop, either, even if he wanted to. Rage bubbles under his skin - has ever since London, since Thomas - and now doubly so. It burns and consumes until Flint isn’t sure if there is anything else left in him, if there ever was.

“I will drink to that,” Vane says with a half-smile. 

He gestures at Flint’s arm when he puts the mug down and cocks an eyebrow.

“Is that why you haven’t had time to clean up or get that arm seen to in the two days minimum it must have taken to get back?”

The question takes Flint by surprise, drags his unwilling mind to the here and now. He looks down at the bloodied clothes he didn’t care to change out of.

The room is like a cavern around him with its high ceiling and stone walls set deep in the belly of the fort. Across him Vane’s profile is bathed in a golden glow from the fire; the lines and creases of his face melt away in its soft light.

Adversary.

“Captured a prize on the way back. Its crew put up a fight.” He offers by way of explanation.

Vane downs the rest of his rum. “Take off your jacket and your shirt. You are bleeding on my floor.”

Ally.

Flint looks at the three drops of blood on the stone floor directly below his left hand with disinterest. Vane’s words clatter in his mind, like ghosts from a past that doesn’t want to be chased.

“Last time I checked we were equal partners, Charles.” he shoots back. “I don’t recall joining your crew since to have you order me about.”

He never expected that ‘willing nursemaid’ would be another such adjective he associated with Vane. Like he never expected that Vane would be the one to come to his rescue; to lay waste to a rotten town by his side like an avenging angel.

Flint shrugs out of his jacket anyway. The piece of cloth he hastily tied over the spot the merchant ship captain’s pistol got him is stained a dark maroon around the wound. He is pretty sure Silver or Bobby - or maybe both of them at once - told him to see Mr. Howell at some point since.

Vane bends over him to reach his arm and Flint takes in the way Vane’s braids nearly brush against his lap, his eyes that are impossibly blue even in the dim light of the room, the small cut above his cheekbone. He smells faintly of sweat and his hands are deft and steady as he unties the makeshift bandage and helps Flint off his shirt.

Flint feels naked without it, aware of his bare chest heaving in a room that’s altogether too large and too cold.

“You need stitches,” Vane declares after examining his arm, matter-of-fact. It’s a small mercy that he doesn’t pretend to be gentle with the needle as he sews him up. And he does a good job of it overall, maybe surprisingly so. A few minutes later Flint is sitting with his wound cleaned, stitched and freshly bandaged, nursing what’s left of his rum.

There is a beat where neither of them say anything.

There is hardly any distance between them, perched as Vane is on the edge of the chair he dragged next to Flint’s. “Didn’t know sewing wounds was one of your skills,” Flint says, to break the silence.

“It usually isn’t,” Vane replies, “but what would they say if you bled to death in my chambers.”

Flint’s skin prickles with the awareness of just how close Vane is - how easy it would be to punch him if he pleased or--

\--how easy it would be to grip Vane’s shoulders now and draw him in, to back him up against a wall and crush their lips together his injured arm be damned.

“I should leave,” he murmurs and bends down to pick up the discarded shirt, a wave of arousal running down his spine, misplaced and mistimed.

He doesn’t look at Vane.

Doesn’t expect Vane’s fingers clasp around his wrist, just as he is about to leave.

Know no shame, Thomas had said. 

Flint can feel his cheeks burning as he raises his eyes to meet Vane’s.

Vulnerable and exposed where he promised to be strong.

He searches for pity in Vane’s face, a recognition of his own weakness, of the clusterfuck that’s been tonight. 

“James--” Vane says and there is no pity there, just his blue eyes and something in the thin set of his mouth that Flint doesn’t quite know how to read.

 

Vane lets him go in the end, never finishes his sentence.

 

The sea glistens silver gray in the distance under the light of the full moon. As Flint walks down the dirt path there is no one to see where he has been, and if a tiny part of him wishes he never left there is no one to stand witness to that either.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! This is the first fic I wrote in this fandom (and I am in constant need of validation as an author) so tell me, dear reader, if you liked it? Black Sails has also kind of taken over my life and I am SO READY to write fifty fics for this pairing, so help me God. ~~(Will I recover from the end of season three if I do, no one knows).~~
> 
> I am also on [tumblr](https://blindbatalex.tumblr.com/) and though my blog is 50% football 50% hockey and 100% raging Dumpster Fire please come shout at me! I literally only know a single person who follows this show and really need people to yell back and forth with.


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